A Winey Christmas

Christmas was always a big holiday for my mother. She would decorate the whole house. Wait, I should rephrase that. I would decorate the whole house. She'd somehow rope me into so much it was funny. It was always for the grandchildren but I knew my mother enjoyed it as much. When those children walked into that house there were lights and decorations everywhere. She'd have a tree in every room.

The first Christmas after my marriage broke up was a little bit rough but mom kept me busy with the decorating. Over the years on Christmas day we always had a big family dinner. My brother, sister and I would bring our families to her house. It was always a big family deal.

We finally had the the decorating done and I had decided to take the kids and spend Christmas eve at mom's. I don't know why but we were always terrible at waiting until the last minutes to wrap gifts. So after the kids went to bed mom and I sat and wrapped gifts.

Mom had a little surprise. A bottle of wine which does not take much to affect me. She had stocked up well on gifts for everyone. Especially the grandchildren. With her and my gifts there were a lot to wrap.

Through the night we had Christmas music on. We talked. I sat on the floor and wrapped gifts. She would make labels and told me which one went to who. I know I wrapped a lot of gifts. She'd keep our glasses full and by the time we were finished we were both feeling pretty good.

Christmas morning my kids had us up bright and early. I allowed my kids to open their gifts from Santa Claus and me. They had to wait until later in the day when everyone opened the gifts from Grandma plus the ones we'd all swap..

Late morning everyone started arriving. Christmas dinner was cooking and smelled really good. Finally, we all ate and with our bellies full we moved to the living room to open gifts.

As everyone started opening gifts we noticed puzzled looks on faces and mom saying, that's not your gift. A lot! It seems the night before as we talked, drank and wrapped, most of the gifts were mislabeled. Between the two we had everything pretty well mixed up.

So that Christmas was different. We opened the gifts and then figured out who got what. We did inform everyone how we spent Christmas eve and everyone had a good laugh out over it. We sure never heard to end of it but it was one of the funniest Christmases we had ever enjoyed..